1. Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to animal carcass meat recovery processing and removing meat from a bone structure and, more particularly, to recovering meat from a neck bone.
2. Background Art
Effective lean recovery systems are critical to increasing the lean yield from an animal carcass and thereby increasing the overall cost effectiveness of a processing facility. Effective lean recovery can be difficult from certain bone structures of the carcass. Particularly, areas in close proximity to and including the vertebrae and spine structure. For example, the neck bone structure attached to the chuck primal has a quality lean remnant that is difficult to remove without having bone fragments intermingled with the lean or having concerns with neural spinal column material (GFAP). Neck bones have several pounds of lean on them when removed from the chuck primal. Further the lean on the neck bone is of a grade and quality that it would be a waste to process through bulk rendering.
There are two common practices to recover this lean. One method is to use manual labor where an operator trims and recovers usable meat using a knife, however, this results in a high labor cost. Another common method is to use mechanical separation technologies such as bone cannons or belt/drum separators, which yields more and has less operational costs than manually trimming, however, concerns about GFAP makes mechanical separation more risky. An improved technology would greatly reduce the risk of testing positive for GFAP by eliminating the primary source, mainly the spinal canal and any remaining spinal fluid/sheath. Ultimately, the over all process facility will benefit from the lower cost/higher yielding mechanical separation system without the risk of GFAP and without the high labor cost.
If a mechanical separation system can become a viable option to recover lean from neck-bones, then the result will be a lower cost and higher yielding process than the current manual method. Others have tried to manually saw the spinal canal from the bones. However, as indicated above, the labor costs are too high, and there is a greater risk of injury to the operator. Manually trimming the meat from neck-bones is labor intensive, a safety risk, costly and can result in excessive stress to the laborer. Mechanical separation of meat from neck-bones have been utilized but not effectively. The practice has been eliminated for many processing facilities as far back as 2003 due to the GFAP risk.
The present invention will allow processors to once again use mechanical separation technology. Also, this technology could give processors a competitive advantage by making product that has a lower risk of contaminates than others in the industry. Removing the un-useful portions prior to downstream processing also increases the capacity of the downstream process. This would be a competitive advantage due to improved efficiency from the ability to run a higher volume of bones thru a downstream process with a fixed capacity.